There’s an ugly irony here
A Palestinian human rights group is complaining about major abuses against Palestinian civilians. The malfeasors stand accused of
- “extra-judicial and willful killings and shooting at combatants and civilians after capturing them;”
- seizing people “in their homes” and dumping their bodies “in remote areas;”
- executing “wounded persons during their evacuation to hospitals;”
- pushing people “to their deaths from tall buildings;”
- shooting people to death in hospital beds; and
- “disregard[ing] the lives of civilians” by using civilian homes as battle grounds.
Those damn Israelis!
Whoops. There I go again, misreading a news stories. The fact is, as soon as I saw the words “Palestinians” and “abuses” I went on automatic pilot. After all, from ordinary media reports, whenever the Palestinians complain about the violence visited against them, it’s always the Israelis’ fault. But not this time: this time, it’s Palestinian on Palestinian violence being reported, from the Fatah/Hamas fighting.
Nor can we get around the Israelis’ lack of involvement by contending that they somehow brutalized these people, rendering them incapable of avoiding this type of violence. As Augean Stables explains, a recent study shows that, while 11 million Arabs have died in the last 57 years, over 90% of them were killed by fellow Muslims. In other words, the bloody, brutal, heartless battles being waged amongst the Palestinians slot neatly into a cultural approach to tribal warfare that has absolutely nothing to do with the Jews.
